Nintendo's history is full of moments that have taken on a near mythological status, ranging from stories of game and hardware development to various demos and builds that are either rare or long lost. One such example is a demo for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that appeared at Space World '97 in Japan, a unique build that showcased elements and scenarios different from the final game. If you don't know, Space World was an annual expo hosted by Nintendo in Japan to showcase games and hardware, running from 1989 to 2001.

A group of enthusiastic developers and modders have now recreated, as closely as possible, that Space World OoT demo from 1997. There are two main sources of the code and information that informed the development - parts of the Space World ROM that were found on a development cartridge of F-Zero X, and then from the now infamous 'gigaleak'. A lot of the textures and content are from the dev cartridge source, while the gigaleak contributed a 'significant amount of insight and assets that were used within this project'.

While the gigaleak can be a bit of a touchy subject, this project has generated a lot of buzz in the retro and modding community over the past 24 hours. As you'd expect it's not '100% accurate' to the original Space World demo, as the developers have had to piece together some elements, but it nonetheless gives a different insight into how earlier builds of OoT were showcased to the public.

This project aims to be a mostly accurate representation of the Nintendo Spaceworld 1997 demo of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Since this project aims to restore an experience that was originally a demo, it cannot be completed from start-to-finish like the final game. Instead, three gameplay “tours” featured in the original Spaceworld 1997 demo are available to choose from, each showcasing various unique flavors of gameplay.

Watching the video, even without delving into the world of ROMs and mod downloads, gives a fun feel of the N64 era and the varied pre-release forms of its most famous games.